Firefighters investigate the scene and look for flare-ups after extinguishing the fire at the hotel.

San Diego 
A man was engulfed in flames as he ran from a Midway District hotel room that exploded while he was making illegal drugs Wednesday morning, witnesses and San Diego authorities said.

The huge blast from the hash oil lab injured two other people, blew out walls and windows, and burned part of the Heritage Inn, a residency hotel on Channel Way off Sports Arena Boulevard.

Several people called 911 about 11:10 a.m. to report an explosion, flames and screaming people running out of the hotel, police said.

James Crout, 43, heard the blast from his hotel room, looked out a window and saw a man with flames coming from his head and body. “He was on fire,” Crout said. “It was chaos.”

The 21-year-old man who caused the blast told authorities he was with a woman in her 20s in a second-floor room, where he was performing a process using a butane spray can to extract oil from hashish, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque said.

While the man was doing that, he lit a cigarette, Luque said. The flame ignited the butane fumes, causing the explosion and fire.

The man suffered possibly life-threatening burns over much of his body, and the woman’s burns were serious, Luque said. A 20-year-old man in an adjoining room suffered blast-concussion injuries and some burns. All three were taken to the UC San Diego Medical Center burn unit.

Several boxes of 10-inch butane spray cans were in the room, but they did not explode, Luque said.

Roderick said the man and woman had been using the butane fumes in a plastic pipe filled with loose marijuana to extract the potent oil. The oil was being heated to evaporate the butane, and a spark ignited the fumes. She said the man and woman may face criminal charges.

Authorities did not release their names.

Second-floor resident Julie Jordan, 30, said she was asleep with a friend’s 3-year-old when the explosion woke her. Though her room is two doors from where the blast occurred, Jordan said the wall of her room “literally blew into us.”

“I’m still picking debris out of my hair,” Jordan said.

She said she looked outside and saw a severely burned man sitting on the stairs. “His hands were melting off and his face was gray,” Jordan said.

Firefighters and police were on the scene moments later. An estimated 25 to 50 people evacuated from the hotel.

Flames spread from the second to the third floor, into at least three rooms, then to the roof of the three-story hotel. The fire was mostly under control by 11:30 a.m., but firefighters continued dousing flare-ups until noon.

The explosion knocked out two walls of the room where it occurred, and the far wall of one adjoining unit, Luque said. Shattered window glass landed in the hotel swimming pool and parking lot.

Luque said veteran firefighters said that “they had never seen devastation like that from an explosion.”

Third-floor resident Joseph Tydingco, 52, said when the room below blew up, his own room “shook like a 6.7 earthquake.”

He ran outside, knocked on other doors to help evacuate residents, and took a peek into the room where the blast took place.

“It was a disaster zone,” Tydingco said. “Everything was blasted to bits.”